The Bottle Flip Experiment

The bottle flip needs little introduction to any parent who has primary aged children. It has been around for a couple of years and seems to still be going strong. Here’s a video that should explain the concept well enough (if leaving you mystified as to why it got such a response and so many views!)

This week’s experiment is based on a famous problem solved by Unilever involving a nozzle used to create detergent. They tried out 10 nozzles (I guess with varying shapes of hole) and then took the best of those and varied that design until they came up with the best nozzle that was practical. This was a problem that mathematicians couldn’t find an effective solution to.

Sounds like a good way to get the ultimate bottle for a bottle flip.

We are going to be using barcharts to record our results.

Bar charts are often confused with column charts. Bar charts strictly speaking have horizontal bars where as column charts have vertical. There’s not much difference in their use other than that.

For each of your trials record the number of lands on the bar chart bu colouring a horizontal bar to the length that matches your score.

When you’ve found the most effective amount of water, try to vary that amount by 10 or 20 ml. Say 200 was the most effective you could try 150ml, 170ml, 190ml, 210ml, 230ml, 250ml